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Hi guys,

A friend of mine has this on his website:

In brief, you should know the following about us: our company was established in 1999 and had been responsible for providing outstanding Service ever since. We pride ourselves on being a proactive service provider and representing the customer needs.

It doesn't sound good to me, but I am the last person who should be offering advice on cleaning it up. I'd appreciate any editing/ help you could provide.

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Hi guys,

A friend of mine has this on his website:

In brief, you should know the following about us: our company was established in 1999 and had been responsible for providing outstanding Service ever since. We pride ourselves on being a proactive service provider and representing the customer needs.

It doesn't sound good to me, but I am the last person who should be offering advice on cleaning it up. I'd appreciate any editing/ help you could provide.

Depends, is he a local competitor or is he in some other business?

- Jim Katen, Oregon

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Hi guys,

A friend of mine has this on his website:

In brief, you should know the following about us: our company was established in 1999 and had been responsible for providing outstanding Service ever since. We pride ourselves on being a proactive service provider and representing the customer needs.

It doesn't sound good to me, but I am the last person who should be offering advice on cleaning it up. I'd appreciate any editing/ help you could provide.

Jeez, what a train wreck of rambling incomplete declarations! It is way too wordy for what he's trying to state. How about something short and sweet like:

"We've been proudly serving the best interests of home buyers since 1999."

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"Our company has provided outstanding customer service in this area since 1999."

Mike got his post in first. We are dealing with short attention spans these days. If I add one more sentence to this paragraph, it willl bbeee gggetting boooorrrinngg. [:)]

Brandon, the last part of your sentence, "known for ..." needs a noun or something like "and we are known for"

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I think Mike O. nailed it earlier. I do have a question...what exactly is a "proactive" electrical service provider? Do they go around knocking on doors, cold call random numbers, leave flyers on the porch or, worse, hang "hey-look-no-one-is-home" crap on your door knob (pet peeve)? Personally, I like my service providers to be reactive, as in: something breaks, I call someone, and they react by coming around and fixing it.

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Thanks all. I like Mike O's version as well......just trying to keep more of their own words in the paragraph sentence.

Does everyone agree with John that my sentence requires a noun after the comma? I really need to go back to writing school- argh.

Agreed. It's always best to say it all with a handful of words.

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How does this sound?:

We have been a proactive service provider since our inception in 1999, known for our outstanding customer service.

PS: I'm mostly doing this as an exercise for myself. I am not sure I will give any unsolicited comments about the website, unless it gets snuck in over a golf game or something.

Grammatically speaking, I think you're sentence is fine, with one exception: because of the intent of the last phrase in your sentence as a qualifier for what precedes, most grammar books would recommend a colon instead of a comma. A Colon (or possibly a dash) creates an exaggerated pause. The colon, in particular, creates that pause and sets the phrase that follows apart as a qualifier to what was said before.

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How does this sound?:

We have been a proactive service provider since our inception in 1999, known for our outstanding customer service.

PS: I'm mostly doing this as an exercise for myself. I am not sure I will give any unsolicited comments about the website, unless it gets snuck in over a golf game or something.

I'd dump proactive all together. Maybe it's only me but, trendy words / terms like proactive, closure, ramp up, spot on, and the like, sound phony to me. I don't know why. It just does.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

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